Inferno: The 118th Hunger Games
by TheMayflyProject
Summary: Young Head Gamemaker Victoria Pencey rides into her second games off the coattails of last year's failure, knowing she has to spoon feed the capital everything they love: suspense. blood. the long game. (SYOT Closed)
1. Prologue I: The Long Game

Victoria Pencey sighed as she hit rewind again. A quick glance at the clock revealed it to be two in the morning. Great. She had been staring at this bloody highlight reel for nearly eleven hours. 117 years of material, and a sum total of zero inspiration.

She was the only one awake in the house, Rhydian having finally gone to bed after an afternoon and evening of bravely tolerating her madness. Even Shiva, the six-pound cotton ball of energy she fondly referred to as a dog, was out cold, curled up in her lap. She stared out the window, wondering if she was the only one awake in the whole world. Most of the lights glaring through the starless darkness came from signs and electrical towers, not from skyrise windows. Her mind automatically reverted to the mind game she had been so fond of as an insomniac child: what if she was the only one alive in the whole world? What would she do then?

She was snapped back into the present by the familiar beeping tick of the countdown as the tape hit its beginning. She had listened to that same tick over twenty-five thousand times that day, as it had remarkably not changed at all since the first games. She made a mental note to consider such a change, as she was willing to bet much of the population found it just as irritating as she did, though perhaps that was the eleven hours talking. Her steady hands twisted her long, thick dark caramel hair into a makeshift bun, as she did by habit when concentrating.

It was decided.

This would be the last time she watched this video, and she was going to get something out of it, something original.

At only nineteen, she had debuted last year as the youngest Head Gamemaker on record. She had been touted as some strategic prodigy, destined to turn the Games on their head. She promised to deliver, made the public love her.

The only problem was, she failed.

Entirely.

Last year's tragedy had left ratings at an all-time low, as well as the country's confidence in her. She was cornered, left with no choice but to make this year's games as memorable as any Quell. And for that to happen, she needed ideas.

She had been full of ideas once, spent hours filling notebooks with elaborate arena maps, scale diagrams, gory plans. All of those notebooks were gone now, though. She was burned out. She was twenty years old and already burnt out. Hence the highlight reel. She had held out hope that watching the heroics and dramatics that had fueled her juvenile fantasies might produce some sort of spark in her mind, some great notion of how to make kids kill each other for sport. She was more than desperate.

Victoria didn't make it through another time. She probably dozed off somewhere in the late 60s, not even able to pry her eyes open for the third Quell and the rebellion that followed. Her dreams were feverish in nature, flickering images of bloodied young men atop mountains of bone, children ripping at each other's necks with their sharpened teeth. Some of the images were real, most augmented.

A child lay dying in a stream, blood mixing with water in a deep crimson trickle.

District Four's Albacore Entzing, Victor of the 48th Games, vaulted over a wall and flew straight at her, morphing into a wolf in midair and staining her visions with a crimson haze.

Twenty four children stood on raised platforms, their faces shifting between those of frightened teenagers and those of wild beasts. They didn't move. They were caged. Isolated. Everything pulsed with crimson energy. Isolate them. Cage them. Stain them crimson.

Her eyes snapped open automatically.

She practically ran to her office, knocking the dog off of her lap as she leapt off of the sofa. Her fingers danced across the keyboard as she typed out a frenetic e-mail full of incomprehensible ideas. She would have to clarify later, but right now she just needed it out. Out of her head, down through her hands, onto paper. Things disappeared from her head. She never remembered her dreams. She needed to get it out now.

Having slammed the send button with all the force of a raging rhinoceros, she slumped back in her chair, grinning. The capital liked a long game? She'd give them one. Victoria Pencey was back. And so were the Hunger Games.

* * *

 **A/N: Hi. I'm somewhat awkward and can't write great author's notes, but please don't let that turn you away. Please submit, the tribute form should appear on my profile. Thank you so much,**

 **-Mae**


	2. Prologue II: Fingerpaint Rainbows

_"Sometimes I wish I could save you,_

 _And there's so many things that I want you to know_

 _I won't give up 'til it's over_

 _If it takes you forever, I want you to know…"_

* * *

 **Arkham Grainger - 19**

 **Victor of 117th Hunger Games**

 **District 10 Mentor**

* * *

The sun glinted off of the arc of clean steel as it soared across the mid-day sky. No clouds. For some reason, the sky's clarity bothered him. Pristine sky, pristine steel. And then the pain came, rushing up his leg like pins and needles, like pure electricity, and the steel wasn't so clean, dripping with crimson… blood was thicker than he had imagined, than it had looked when it stained his own cold hands like fingerpaint, like the way he used to start big, sloppy rainbows.

Then she started screaming, and as he forced himself to watch, the sky wasn't quite so clean anymore either, or maybe it was his eyes, bloodstained eyes no matter how many times he blinked or flushed it out with salted tears.

The sky darkened and her screams blended with another set as he watched.

"Help! Help me! Please!" _I want to, I want to, but I can't leave her. I had to make a choice, I'm sorry._

"Please, I don't want to die!" _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm-_

"I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home!" Hoarse screams were cracked like glass, split by desperate sobs _I'm sorry, I couldn't do it, I couldn't save you, I had to choose, I couldn't let both of you-_

Arkham jolted upright, snapped into consciousness by his own scream. His teeth found their place on his lip as he swallowed back the tears, trying to breathe, but they were met only with shredded skin and the taste of iron. _Iron… steel… sunlight… Stop it._

He took measured, shaking breaths, forcing himself to obey routine, to check the time (not yet 4:00), to attach cold titanium to burning, slick skin, to breath a little.

Cool, dry hands found his back, found his soaked-through tank top, found his shoulders tense with adrenaline, pushed steady thumbs into knotted muscle. Mornings started this way now- too early, perfectly silent, not nearly sleepy enough. Finally, she spoke.

"Noah again? Or was it her?" his shuddering sigh answered the question well enough, but Arkham avoided answering out loud, was never quite sure he could say their names, was never quite sure he could even choke out "both."

She slipped out of the bed to kneel at his feet, to adjust the way his leg fit over his scars. This one was new, magnetic; he wasn't quite sure how to get it on yet, and his trembling fingers weren't exactly speeding up the process. Holly's voice was controlled, gentle. A nurse's voice.

"Coffee?" Arkham managed a small smile as he pulled her in for a kiss.

"Always coffee. I revolve around coffee." As harmless as the murmured joke sounded, it was true. Constants like steaming mugs of coffee and haircuts and straightening picture frames were the normality his black clouds of fragile days swirled around. He needed routine, clung to it like…

The nightmares were only getting worse, and he knew exactly why, was reminded of it every time he stepped outside. Temperatures were rising. June and July were slipping through the cracks between his desperate fingers, and he wasn't ready yet. _Such a long year shouldn't feel so painfully, shatteringly short._

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for the tributes you've all submitted so far, and for the effort you've obviously put into them. That's something I really respect. Now what we really need is so many more! Please keep submitting, and get other people to submit as well.**

 **The biggest thing with these tributes is detail. Detail, detail, detail. As I've mentioned, we're playing the long game here, so I need everything you've got on these kids to work with. One or two sentences isn't enough.**

 **One resource I really recommend if you're struggling with your character is david12341's Character Guide, The Do's and Don'ts for your OC! This is a really great guide, and I'm around to answer any more specific questions you have or anything that's not mentioned in that guide.**

 **Thank you so much again, I really hope you'll stick around and submit a tribute or two.**

 **-Mae**


	3. Prologue III: Wrath and Consequences

**A/N: I'm sorry, I know these first few chapters have been pretty short. Right now, I'm just setting up some characters and history that might come up tangentially, and I'm trying to keep the submissions rolling. Once tributes are in and we have a real story going, chapters are going to get a lot longer, so please excuse the extra exposition and internal monologuing while things get into motion. I'll try and spice things up a bit whenever I can.**

* * *

" _And I've never played a fair game_

 _I've always had the upper hand_

 _But what good is intellect and airplay…"_

* * *

 **D'arcy Porter - 14**

 **Victor of 116th Hunger Games**

 **District 2 Mentor**

* * *

D'arcy Porter was a pure product of the system, and she loved it. Playing poster child was fun, but what she really loved was the wrath. D'arcy revelled in her wrath, in snarling at little kids and watching them run. She'd never liked little kids; how could she when even the adults had trouble keeping up?

D'arcy didn't flaunt her victory the way District One kids did, flashing pearly teeth into Capitolite cameras, modelling for clothing lines. She didn't want that kind of fame.

Instead, she got high off of the fear she instilled. Being the first 12-year-old Victor in 38 years had its advantages, as well as a killer reputation. Nobody wanted to go up against the girl who had killed 16 people before she'd had her first crush.

D'arcy had a lot of hunger for a 5-foot middle schooler, and an intense focus. Right now, that hunger was for winning. She had come in second place last year, and D'arcy Porter didn't come in second. Romulus had dragged her all the way out of the viewing room just to call her a brat, and she appreciated the discretion, but her reaction was perfectly justified. She knew, of course, that screaming at a dead kid through a camera was entirely useless, but her tribute had deserved it for managing to lose a sword fight against an un-trained, three-limbed kid who was still losing blood by the ounce.

That was D'arcy: wrathful, hungry, focused. She was lucky, too, and proud of it. She'd always been lucky: lucky to get drawn for the best stations in the training center, lucky to be put at a table with the spineless kids in second grade, lucky that two years ago the 18-year-old chosen by the academy to volunteer had been reaped, lucky that she had stepped forward before anyone else had thought to. She didn't think she was full of herself; she knew what she'd done for herself apart from what she'd gotten by luck.

This year, if all went well, she wouldn't need luck. She'd seen the academy's top ranking kids, and they were good. They didn't have wrath, but that was something you could teach. What you couldn't was passion, and they had that in abundance.

D'arcy had sort of a sense about people. She knew who was passionate, who was angry, who was utterly gutless. Those were the ones she befriended, the weak ones. It wasn't so much out of pity as it was out of the desire to get on the top and stay there. She had her friends on short leashes; they did whatever she asked. She didn't know whether it was out of fear or loyalty, and she didn't particularly care. She liked a challenge, but not from her friends. Their obedience benefited her more than any thinking they could have done for themselves anyway, and she'd decided long ago that she'd make more use of them than the world would. The kind of kid who was weak-willed enough to become someone's servant in the second grade and still be there in the eighth was going to be dependent forever, and it was up to D'arcy, as an independent person, to take advantage of that.

Adults, of course, understood D'arcy's friendships differently. They understood most things differently; she wasn't going to be that closed-minded when she grew up. They called her a bad influence; they said her friends were sweet kids, that she was ruining them. They didn't say any of these things to D'arcy, of course, but she had decided a long time ago that any conversation about her was one she had every right to listen to. Really, she ought to know everything in it beforehand, since she had been there for everything she'd done, right? Nobody ever cared about people overhearing things they already knew. Anyway, the point was that she found herself to be very misunderstood, and D'arcy had always felt that she deserved more respect than being misunderstood.

After all, she was the Head Peacekeeper's daughter. Everyone should have known that she came with consequences.

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, there's another previous victor. D'arcy is a little harder to write, because she's a bit less on the relatable side than some of these other characters, but I hope she turned out well enough despite her chapter's being on the short side.**

 **By the way, are you guys enjoying the third person, or would you rather I switched to first? I know most people have a preference one way or another, and keeping the audience happy is the core of writing in these sorts of platforms.**

 **Finally, please keep submitting. Right now I've only received 4 tributes, and only know of 1 or 2 more on the way. Remember, there's no story if there are no tributes. The form is on my profile, and you can just shoot me a PM when you're ready. Thank you so much!**

 **-Mae**


	4. Prologue IV: Small Spaces

" _Check my vital signs_

 _To know I'm still alive and I walk alone…_

 _My shadow's the only thing that walks beside me_

 _My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating_

 _Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me…"_

* * *

 **Laura West - 18**

 **Victor of 115th Hunger Games**

 **District 12 Mentor**

* * *

Laura West didn't like crowds, and she hated publicity. Laura was, instead, a small girl who existed in small spaces. She was never going to break five feet, and even then you could see every bone in her body.

She'd always thought it was because they didn't have much food in the house, but the last few years had taught her that it was more of a metabolic issue. She just couldn't gain weight.

However, that suited her just fine. She didn't need to be big, because with the money she'd earned winning the games no one in her family would have to work for years.

She was happy to be small, to sit and read inside of window benches where no one could find her. Laura had always loved hiding, had won every game of hide-and-seek with the neighbourhood kids when she was little.

They had been a sort of gang, all of them scrawny, looking after each other while their parents worked. Almost all of them had gone down the same path: got desperate enough to start stealing things when they were 13 or 14, most in prison before they were old enough to work.

That had been Laura's future as well until she'd been reaped. She'd soon discovered that she could hide in the Games as well. Nobody had even seen her between the bloodbath and the endgame, when she stood alone against the boy from District 2.

He was big, trained, he'd killed at least 6 tributes already. What on Earth was going to stop him from killing her too?

It was that moment that she knew she was going to die. She realized that until then, she'd always had some semblance of hope, some thought that she might make it, but at that moment there were no more options.

Even if she hadn't revealed herself, the boy would have won. She didn't have as much food and water left, and that was what it would have come down to. Her only choice was to walk out into plain sight and hope for a miracle.

The miracle announced itself with the loudest roar Laura had ever heard. As she dropped to the ground, hands clapped over her ears, the mutt soared over her. It missed her head by less than a second, ripping Henri Lipher's clean off instead. Just like that, without doing anything at all, she'd won.

She didn't run, just stared at the boy's empty neck; the creature couldn't hurt her now. She'd been counting; she was the only one left. She couldn't bring herself to look at the head, but her eyes never left his body, even as she was pulled out of the arena, clinging to the rope ladder as it swung in the wind.

She couldn't shake from her head that he'd only been 18- only three years older than her. All of them had just been kids.

Laura had made a better recovery than a lot of Victors. Everyone else who lived on her new street was an addict or psychotic. Laura was just removed.

She'd always liked to be alone, but this was different. There was no reason for her to hang around in the seam anymore, to look after knob-kneed little kids. Her gang had disowned her; there was no place in a family like that for someone who had the option to be anywhere else.

Thus, Laura had no place at all, so she just stayed where they put her: Victors' Village, House Number 8. She had only left once or twice, not counting her Victory Tour and preparing two kids a year for the fact that they were going to die.

She spent most of her days inside of a window bench. A lot of days she'd read- it didn't matter what, she was too distracted to care what it was or how many times she'd read it- but sometimes she just sat and thought, and very occasionally she tried to remember.

Today was one of those days, when she decided it was only fair that someone think about what had happened in that arena. Laura knew it was all on film, but she felt that it was her duty as the only survivor to really remember it, to really remember everyone that had been there with her.

She'd made herself watch the tapes so she would know what was missing. She'd seen or heard almost everything herself: creeping around the arena every few nights to steal more supplies made one a frequent witness to private events.

She knew things that the public didn't; she knew the names that Marina Hollace had called her District partner. She'd seen two 13-year-olds kiss because they were afraid not to get to at least once before they died. She'd heard the District 9 boy vomiting intermittently into the river for almost seven hours, right near her hiding spot so she couldn't move, before the cameras had finally arrived to watch him finish the death he'd started a day before.

She'd committed everything to memory, and most of it to paper, because she didn't want it to disappear forever. As happy as she was that she had been the one to make it out alive, she didn't think anyone deserved to have the last things they did forgotten forever, so she made herself live in the past sometimes. It was the only selfless thing she ever tried to do, was just living in the past for a few hours when she could concentrate hard enough to do it.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's submitted: we've almost reached halfway! I'm at 11 Tributes right now, so if just a few more people could take a few moments to fill out the form on my profile and PM me a tribute, that would be amazing.**

 **I appreciate everyone who's read this and commented; thank you guys so much for your support! Please feel free to leave constructive criticism, or just to say Hi.**

 **Thank you,**

 **Mae**


	5. District I Introductions: White Lies

**A/N: I just wanted to warn everyone that we have a pretty heavy set of backstories here, and the story's going to deal with some pretty serious issues. I will, of course, issue POV-specific content warnings, but please be aware that this story is rated T for a good reason. If you're in a bad situation, always reach out to someone you trust or call a hotline. If people are really disturbed by the way in which I'm addressing any of these topics, want to let me know about triggers I'm not addressing, or are willing to help make any of the portrayals more accurate and/or respectful, please let me know.**

* * *

 **Angelina Carson - 17**

 **District 1 Female**

[Two Nights Before D1 Reapings]

 _POV Content Warning: Domestic Abuse_

* * *

"Alright, Angelina, look a bit to your left, darling. Beautiful! Close your knees a smidge, and Silvius, baby, don't be afraid to put a hand on her waist. You're supermodels, not strangers, my dears!" _Snap. Snap. Click-Snap._

"Amazing, we've got it! That's a wrap, darlings, good night!" The photographer swished out of the room, all business, purple hair floating behind her. Angelina let herself breathe for a moment, took her time changing back into her own clothes, wiping off the glittery makeup.

When she came back through the studio on her way out, she was surprised to see Silvius leaning against the doorframe. They'd been shooting together for almost six years, and he had always been gone by the time she was changed.

"It's raining," he began, seeing the look on her face, "I wasn't sure you had an umbrella, so I thought I'd see if I could walk you home." She couldn't help smiling.

"Admittedly," he began grinning as well as he opened the door for her, "I don't have one either, but this should work just as well, and I couldn't bring myself to let a nice girl walk around alone at night, especially in this weather." He shed his leather jacket and held it over her head, and thus was completely soaked less than a block later.

The walk home was a long one, but by the time they reached Angelina's street, she was still dry. She wanted to invite Silvius in, to offer him a warm drink and some dry clothes, but she could already see Josh waiting on the doorstep, and that wasn't a good sign.

"Thank you so much, but I, um, I'm okay from here."

"Nonsense, there's no use getting wet now! I've gone this far, another block won't hurt."

"Please, just go." They were still moving, still approaching the house. She wanted him gone, she wanted him gone fast, she wanted him gone fast before-

"You're late." Josh was on his feet already. His arms were safely crossed over his chest, but she wasn't fooled. She could see his fists curled up tight, knuckles turning white, lips pressed together in a line she was all too used to.

"I know, baby, I'm sorry, the shoot ran late and I-"

"Who's he?" Angelina, following Josh's glare, realized that Silvius was still standing next to her, dripping, jacket suspended over her head. She watched in horror as he slid it back around his own shoulders and stepped forward, hand outstretched, grin broad across his face, no idea that his charisma wasn't going to save him this time.

"Pleasure to meet you, my name is-" Before another word could exit Silvius' lips, his arm was pinned behind his back.

"What are you doing with my girlfriend, pretty? You trying to take her from me? Cuz I could make you a little less pretty, save the other little girls some trouble…" Silvius could do nothing but gasp for breath, trying to pull away. He might have looked muscular, but Angelina doubted he'd been in a fight of any kind before.

"Please stop, Josh, he hasn't done anything to me! He walked me home, that's all."

"Walking you home in the rain? Putting his pretty, expensive jacket up over your head? That's flirting, Angelina. C'mere. This is why I didn't want you hanging around these models, all they know how to do is flirt." Releasing Silvius, Josh's hand closed around Angelina's wrist instead and pulled. "Let's go inside." Angelina was done, for once. She wasn't going to take it.

"It's not flirting, it's chivalry! You could stand to gain some!"

"What did you just say to me?" She tried to stand her ground, but he yanked her close, right up close so she could feel the hot air coming out of his nose and she could watch his pupils dilate,

black holes expanding

and expanding

and expanding,

and then he yanked on her again and the bite of the concrete steps against her ankles snapped her back into the moment as she scrambled after him, sneaking a glance back at the horrified look on Silvius' face. The door slammed shut and then she was alone with her boyfriend, and she knew that no one was going to hear what happened next. No one ever did.

He started with her arms. She could feel the marks his fingers and knuckles were going to leave, was already mapping out the red, the purple, the brown. He moved on from his hands before long, setting in with a book, a shoe, a lamp. She pulled back into the part of her brain where it didn't hurt as much, where she could fuzz out her nerves and her ears too, because sometimes his words hurt just as much. She'd learned long ago not to fight back; when Josh got jealous or territorial, it was going to run its course, and she didn't want it to take any longer than it had to.

When he was done, he left. He needed air, he said. She unfurled her limbs slowly, took her time moving. She went to the bathroom, dug to the back of the cabinet, took a painkiller, hid the bottle again, went to bed. She knew the routine, and she knew not to wait up for him. He needed to cool off, and then they'd be okay tomorrow.

* * *

She woke up in the morning to the smell of his coffee, strong and black. She crept to the bathroom, spread makeup over the bruises, cleaned herself up. He didn't like to see the bruises. He liked for things to get better fast, and bruises healed in phases, took their time.

He was waiting for her in the kitchen, two mugs of coffee and a pretty little box and his wide, easy grin.

"I'm sorry, baby. I just got protective, you know? I just don't want you to get hurt. It's a bad world out there, and I'm just trying to take care of you, trying to teach you to take care of yourself, too. That's all." His hands were on her arms, gentle this time, sweet. She tried not to shiver as his thumbs ran softly over the bruises they had made just last night. She knew he was trying. This was just the way he loved her.

"I got you something, last night, when I was starting to feel real sorry and all. I think it'll look real nice on that pretty neck of yours." He touched her neck, too, her collarbone, as he opened the box. It was another necklace, gold this time, a fine chain and his name in swooping cursive. He brushed her hair aside, linking the cool metal at the top of her spine.

"There, pretty girl. Now everyone'll know you're mine." He kissed her hand, her neck, her mouth. This was okay. Everything was okay.

"Thank you, it's beautiful." Her hands on his shoulders, his on her waist. Contact meant they were okay again. "I'll take it with me to the Games, and then I can think about you every day." He took her hands in his, pulled away a step.

"You're really going through with this, Angel? You're actually going?" He had never wanted her to go, but she'd been in love with the idea of Victory so much longer than she'd been in love with Josh.

"This is a part of my life, okay? Just as much as my family or my job or anything else. You can wait for me a few weeks, can't you?"

* * *

 **Midas Princeton – 18**

 **District 1 Male**

[Evening Before the D1 Reapings]

 _POV Content Warning: Underage Drinking in 2nd Section_

* * *

Midas was shirtless, his muscles were burning, he was drenched in sweat, and he was loving every second of it. He loved the weight of the spear in his hands, the way his breath came in cold and left faster than he could replace it, the way blood and music pounded hard in his ears. He loved the feeling of pressing trainer out of trainer to the ground, not even glancing at faces, just striking. Most of all, he loved the way his father was looking at him, the way Valour Princeton let out a huge yell for his son as he hopped down from the platform and headed for the showers.

"That's my boy, right there! That's my Victor, first in the academy since he could walk! His averages are almost as good as mine were, back in the day." Midas felt proud walking out into the town square, standing next to his parents, knowing for sure that he was going into the games, going to prove that he was their son.

"Alright, King Midas, tell me the list. What are you going to remember?" Midas' Dad had made a list on his very first day of training of all of the things that needed to improve before the Games. When Midas was little, the list had been a game of its own. Everything on the list started at a 1 and had to get to a 10, and every time he moved something up a number he got to stay up late and watch old highlight reels with his parents. After a while, the highlight reels had lost their novelty, but Midas just liked the feeling of sitting between his parents, feeling their pride and their love. That was the best part.

The list wasn't finished yet, but it wasn't supposed to be. The point of the list was to always have a goal, no matter how high your ranking was or how perfect your averages were. Midas had the rest of the list memorized.

"Cleaner, faster throws. Stop moving impulsively, you can surprise your opponent without surprising yourself. Swimming is still pretty low, climbing is better, but still only an 8. Stop looking for validation, it'll slow me down."

"Beautiful, and marketing?" Midas' mother had a list of her own. She'd been the most highly sponsored tribute in history, because of what she called 'self-marketing'. She had always insisted that her son practice it as well, pushing his social training almost as hard as his physical work.

"Blink more often, staring into someone's eyes freaks them out. Have different smiles for different people. Never admit having forgotten a name, a face, or a detail. Just dance around it until you remember."

"You're ready, my boy." His father was grinning, and that was all the encouragement Midas needed. He knew he was ready. He was the best, how could he not be ready?

* * *

Midas couldn't sleep. The Reapings were in the morning, and he had no idea why he couldn't sleep. He had trained for nine hours, he should have been exhausted, but he wasn't getting anywhere.

This had only happened a few times before, nights when he just couldn't sleep, where his brain was too full of thoughts and his lungs never quite felt full enough. He pulled on a pair of pants and slipped down the road, deciding that he might as well enjoy his last night at home.

What he needed right now was Blaze Price. Blaze was always up, and Blaze always knew what to do.

When he reached the house, Blaze's light was still on, just like he knew it would be. Midas knelt to pick up a pebble, launching it at his friend's window. He didn't even have time to reach for a second before the window opened, emerald eyes, a mess of black hair, and a wide, cocky grin filling the opening. Blaze held up his finger. _Be down in a minute_.

Blaze had always had a bit of a flair for the dramatic. He could, for instance, have come down the stairs and right out the front door, but instead, he stuck with the routine the boys had had since they were seven. A rope of tied-together sheets came flying out the window, and then Blaze himself appeared, rappelling down the side of his well-maintained house. He didn't bother hiding the rope; he'd be back up in his room and have everything cleaned up before his parents were even awake.

" _Hermano_! What's up?" Blaze tackled his best friend in a huge hug, their laughter and horseplay looking odd on the otherwise silent, dark street.

"Couldn't sleep. Guess I thought you might throw a good goodbye party." Blaze grinned.

"Oh, I know how to throw the best. Just the two of us?"

"As long as it won't cramp your style." Midas didn't want to be the centre of attention tonight. He'd be in the public eye constantly for the next few weeks, maybe longer, but tonight he just wanted to be a guy with a best friend.

They sneaked into the Price's garage- the sneaking was, once again, just for ceremony- and Blaze pulled out two lawn chairs and a pack of beers.

They started out sipping, slow. Silent. It felt like a goodbye. Usually, Midas dove right into the crazy, but when it was just the two of them the drinking was more to relax than to let loose. He let the alcohol buzz up into his brain, let himself stop feeling for a little while, just laugh and drink and be with his best friend.

He'd throw up later, he knew it, because he didn't have a high threshold for this kind of stuff, but Blaze would be there to bring him coffee and water and damp towels. Blaze had always been there, and what Midas was trying not to think about was that Blaze couldn't come with him this time. He had to do it alone.

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, that's the first one down! Hope you guys enjoyed it, feel free to leave any feedback. The blog is up as well, link is on my profile.**

 **Thank you so much to BANDITO4EVER736 for Angelina and to mellissa rose for Midas.**


	6. District II Introductions: Last Chances

**Brayden Lipher - 18**

 **District 2 Male**

[Evening Before D2 Reapings]

* * *

"Look at that, Brayden, he's got your eyes!"

"No, those are mom's eyes, I had nothing to do with it." Markus strode in from the kitchen, halfway through a banana, eyes twinkling as he watched his brother.

"I wouldn't be so sure, buddy," he threw in casually, "He looks a lot more like you than he does me." Mara's melodramatic gasp rolled easily in laughter.

"Seriously? What motivation would I have to cheat on you with your carbon copy of a little brother?"

"Hey! I'll have you know that we're very different! I, of course, am the dapper one, and he's still just a shy little kid, probably can't even take a hit."

"Oh, and you _can_ take a hit?"

"I don't take hits, sweetheart. I deal 'em out." He tackled her with all the force of a chihuahua, but she fell over anyway, the two of them dissolving into laughter and kisses. Brayden stayed where he was, as forgotten as the banana, holding an 8-month-old and probably not supporting its neck quite how he was supposed to.

Brayden didn't mind just watching, though. He liked seeing Markus happy, settled the way he was. He could still remember the months after his final reaping, the grief, the anger, not knowing what to do with himself if he couldn't have the only thing he had ever worked for, ever wanted. Brayden just wanted him to be like this, to be happy and have a life that didn't revolve around the Games. He wanted that for all of his brothers. So far, Markus was the only one who'd managed it.

Suddenly the kid started making all these noises like he was gonna start crying or something, and the way they did that all the time had always kind of freaked Brayden out, so he started sort of rubbing his thumb across the baby's little forehead like his mom used to do when he was a kid and couldn't get to sleep. Just kept looking at the little guy and rubbing his thumb in these tiny circles on the baby's forehead until he started getting quieter again. Brayden didn't even notice Markus standing behind him until his brother spoke.

"You got him to sleep?" Brayden looked at the kid for a second, at his long eyelashes closed over big grey eyes.

"Yeah, I guess I did."

"How? It usually takes forever to make him stop crying at night."

"Just rub your thumb across his forehead, like this, gentle and even. It's like mom used to… never mind." Brayden's face went red as he realised that Markus had never had nightmares as a kid, not the way he had.

"You're a natural at this, Brayden. It's not everyone that can get a squirmy little kid out cold like that on their first try."

"Oh, no, I couldn't do all this, not like you and Mara can. I'm not… I'm not really the Dad type."

"Trust me, little brother, you'll only be saying that 'till the day you see your own son. It just sort of clicks into place, like an instinct." Brayden looked at his brother. They didn't have a lot of these moments, quiet, brotherly. Markus never really gave him advice, but maybe he felt like he needed to today. It was his way of telling Brayden he loved him, because he needed to get it out before his little brother left. He understood that, the way they all handled goodbyes. He and his brothers had enough regrets.

* * *

When Brayden got home, he was surprised to see his girlfriend waiting on the porch, tears in her eyes. He held out his arms, didn't say a thing as she rushed into them. He didn't need to say anything, his hands and his stability had always been enough to stop her shaking. This time, though, she pulled away after a few seconds.

"Please don't go."

"We've talked about this, M. I have to go. I promised myself and my family a long time ago." Mariette had never wanted him to go. She hated the Games, hated the violence and the betting and everything that went with them. She had pleaded with him about it time and time again, but this was different. She had never looked this scared.

"Hey, what else is wrong? What's going on, why are you crying?"

"You can't go, Brayden, please. Please don't go."

"Why not? Talk to me, tell me why."

"Because… because I…" She collapsed into him again, shaking with sobs. He held her tight, sat down with her on the steps.

"Don't be scared, sweetheart…" He murmured, soft, gentle, steady. "Don't be scared, I'm coming back for you, don't be scared…"

"I'm pregnant, Brayden." She shuddered as he stopped mid-sentence, shocked. "I'm pregnant."

"You mean there's… there's a…" She choked out a laugh at the way he was looking at her, the way he was looking at her stomach.

"Yeah, there's a baby in there. We're having a baby." He hugged her again, then, both of them forgetting about the Reapings, about the Games. He couldn't keep those thoughts away, though, and everything came crashing back into his head like white water.

"How long do I have?" He could feel himself starting to shake, just slightly, so he clenched his muscles. He had to be there for Mariette right now. It wasn't okay for him to break right now. This wasn't allowed to be his breaking point. She looked up at him, bewildered.

"What?"

"How far along are you?" He was trying so hard to keep the tremor out of his voice as her face twisted, filling with horror as she realised what he was asking.

"No. No. You're not still going, you're not still going after this." Her eyes were brimming with something between despair and anger, and he didn't know what he was going to get, so he just held her closer. He knew no explaining he could do was going to make her happy, so he just held her.

Not even his brothers understood the way Brayden needed the Games. It had held a sort of purpose in all of their lives, all of them had wanted it, Markus and Vulcan had lost themselves in the absence of it, but Brayden needed it. He couldn't understand why the Games meant more to him than Mariette, than his life, than his own unborn child, but maybe it had something to do with Henri.

"I have to, M. I have to. I don't know why, but I have to go. Believe me, I want to stay with you so bad, I want to be here when this baby is born more than anything, but I need to go. I'll come back for you, I promise. I promise."

"You can't!" Her voice cracked, the loudest thing on the street as she tore herself out of his arms. "You can't make that kind of promise, because you don't know!" Her fists slammed into his chest, coming out of nowhere, knocking away his air. "So stop promising me you'll come back, because you don't know that you will, and you're not the one that has to live with the consequences!" He stayed still, let her hit him over and over and over until she collapsed, sobbing, against him.

"I'm sorry." That was all he could say. He'd never thought about her. This whole time, he'd never thought about After. She was right. He'd either be dead or damaged, and she'd be left to patch up their lives. "I'm sorry. I didn't- I didn't ever mean to put that on you. I didn't mean to pull you into this."

There was nothing else he could say, because none of his words were going to fix what he'd put on her, what he'd done to her, so he just sat there and stroked her hair and held her and didn't shake at all. That was all he could do for her, he could be the strong one. He could try not to need her for as long as possible.

When she finally fell asleep, he picked her up and carried her home. He knew he couldn't do what she really wanted, so he tried to do little things. He avoided the brighter and louder parts of town. He tried not to shift his weight as he walked. He slid her shoes and her jacket off, he tucked her under the covers, he filled a glass with lemon water and set it next to her bed for the morning.

He had a mug of tea with her parents before he went home. He'd been like family to the Daylins for 13 years, like the son they didn't have, and they deserved a proper goodbye.

A lot of people deserved a proper goodbye. 23 kids were about to die, and there were going to be a lot of regrets. He didn't want to risk adding to that pool.

* * *

He got to the Reapings early. He didn't know why, but he wanted to be the first one there. Maybe it was so he could think, so he could remember for a while. He had a lot of memories in front of that stage, so he hopped the rope and sat right in the middle of the boys' section for a while, just thinking.

He was still lost in the depths of his mind when Kain Sanders landed on his shoulders from behind, teasing out a yelp of surprise. Kain had always had a way of sneaking up on Brayden like that, completely silent until he wanted to be noticed.

"C'mon, Lipher, toughen up! You think you're gonna win the games getting surprised that easily?"

"I think I'm gonna win the games like this!" Brayden tackled his friend and they both went down, laughing, pretending to beat each other up. When they were laughing too hard to move, they lay on their backs and let it subside, the same way they had done since they were kids. Neither of them spoke until it was quiet, and then Kain sat up, still not looking at Brayden, his voice serious for once.

"Seriously, though, you shouldn't do it. There's no use risking your life for money your family doesn't need."

"I know. I know that this is stupid. I know that this is selfish. I know the burden this is putting on everyone else. I know everything you're going to say to me, and none of it is going to work. It's only going to hurt, and I don't want that to be the way I say goodbye to you, okay?" After another minute, he stood slowly, offered a hand to Kain. After a moment of hesitation, his friend took it.

"Okay. I've got your back, man. If this is what you really need to do, go do it. I ain't gonna let anybody say nothin' bad about you while you're gone." Brayden wanted to hug him, but he knew to wait. Kain had never lasted more than 30 seconds being serious, and sure enough, the smile spread and the joke came out. "I'll wait 'till you get back, and then it's insults 24/7, in front of your back just the way you like 'em."

That was all it took for the boys to go back to business as usual, and they joked around until the square started filling up and they had to check in. That was it, because they were in different sections. Brayden had to stay in the middle of the pack, last names I-Q, but Kain was in the back section, between Sanchez and Santiago. There was a list in Brayden's head of people he might never talk to again, and his best friend's name had just been checked off.

He didn't listen to the Escort's speech; hadn't since he was 9 or 10, maybe younger. He had listened carefully as a kid, not because he particularly cared about the material, but because he thought that everyone deserved to be listened to by someone. He'd grown cynical later, after Christoph's games. He'd had to stop believing in fairy tales, had stopped believing in good people after that.

These days, he only tuned in for the last part, the part that mattered to him. For a second, though, as the Escort's hand fished around in the bowl of paper slips, Brayden faltered. What if he stayed? What if he stayed for his baby and his best friend and the woman he loved? He could say he didn't have time to volunteer, that someone had stolen it out from under him. His father had forgiven Markus, he would forgive his youngest son too, right? Brayden's confidence was dropping exponentially, he was going to back out, but then two things happened at once.

The first thing was that he saw Henri, his brother, his best friend, a ghostly projection, grinning up on that stage, letting the Escort hold his hand high in the air, relishing in the way everyone was looking at him. Things changed fast, though, and Henri's face barely had time to register horror before it was gone, taken right off of him by the airborne hound. His body stood there, in Brayden's mind, not falling over even as his blood splattered the Escort and the wall behind him. The head rolled to Brayden's feet somehow, and he had to stop himself from stooping to pick it up. He knew nobody else could see it, he knew he just had too many memories, all sparking together in his head, as he looked into his brother's empty eyes. This was why, right. This was why he had to go, because he couldn't keep walking around with this ghost by his side. Live or die, Henri's legacy would be complete. He would leave Brayden alone, then, would stop hanging on to a world he was supposed to have left years ago. He would let his little brother stop grieving.

The second thing that happened was that the Escort read her slip, and everything came into sharp focus.

"Kain Sanders."

He knew, of course, that if he didn't volunteer, someone else would, but for some reason it was important to Brayden that he go in the place of his own friend. It felt like his responsibility alone.

Christoph's ghostly hand flew into the air. Henri's swung up next, easy, confident. Brayden followed their lead, his hand raised above the crowd, stepping where his brothers had stepped, shouting from the aisle with the strength of their voices behind his own.

"I volunteer as tribute." He let his legs carry him up to the podium, his eyesight tunneling in on another target: Mariette, face streaked with tears, standing at the rope, just far enough back that the peacekeepers weren't pulling her away. He almost let himself walk past her, almost let himself leave her like that, but his heart was stronger than his autopilot and he found her in his arms. He pulled away before the peacekeepers could reach them, tipping up her chin with two fingers, giving her one last gentle kiss. She held on to his hand for a second as he walked on, pressed something into it. Cold metal filled his fist, and he didn't dare look. It wasn't worth risking tears, not yet, not in front of everyone, so he let his legs keep carrying him, up the aisle, up the stairs, his free hand clasped between those of the Mayor, of his nephew's grandfather, as the Escort said something, put a microphone in front of his face. _My name, probably. She wants my name._

 _Christoph- Henri-_ "Brayden Lipher." She smiled, a sickly sweet, fake sort of grimace, thin lips stretched over her closed mouth.

"Another Lipher? These boys multiply like rabbits, I swear." No one laughed. "Are you the last one?"

"Yes, I'm the youngest." He hadn't expected a conversation, hadn't expected her to talk about his brothers, hadn't expected to have to stand there while the whole District stared silently, waiting for something. He didn't know what.

"Well, I guess you'll have to win then, won't you? Come home so you can keep it in the family?" Her mention of Victory had gotten the District cheering again, but he just clenched his jaw, fist tightening around the metal in his hand, half hoping some sharp edge would cut into him, move his pain somewhere else. It was like she knew, like she was trying to hit a nerve, the way she talked about his brothers, talked about his unborn children. She was already walking away, though, to the girls' bowl, not waiting to see if she could get a reaction out of him.

He was just paranoid. This was all normal. He should have been enjoying himself, should have been working the public already, so he made himself do it. Looked straight into a camera, grinned confidently, raised his empty fist triumphantly, forced the smile to reach his eyes as his other hand clenched tighter and tighter, absorbing all of his regret, all of his pain. He had to make this look easy.

* * *

 **Hosanna Carson - 18**

 **District 2 Female**

[2nd to Last Night Before D2 Reapings]

* * *

Hosanna Carson had a zone. She only ever went into it when she was training, and usually only when she was alone, and right now she was both of those things. It was more common when she was swimming, because of the way the water made white noise in her ears, but climbing worked too.

She was alone because she never climbed on belay anymore, had stopped when she realized that there wouldn't be any belays to rely on in the Games. She had to be able to trust herself.

When she was in the zone, Hosanna's concentration narrowed to needle-tip precision. She could do the same thing for hours without a single outside thought, could devote herself entirely to water or rocks or metal. She always performed best in the zone- everyone would perform better if they weren't having so many thoughts all the time- but she kept reminding herself not to fall back on it too much. There was no guarantee of that kind of concentration when her life was being threatened in a dozen different ways and she didn't have time to work herself into it, so she tried not to hold onto it for too long, tried to train with as many distractions as possible just to make sure she could do it. This had been easier before she'd been announced as the Volunteer, back when the gym had been full of hopeful 18-year-olds, but she was managing on her own. This was the second to last night anyway; Hosanna knew she wasn't going to make any major improvements before the Games, so she was happy to go into the zone for a few hours.

She tapped the top of the rock wall and started back down, following the same path she'd taken up, dropping the last 10 feet. As she gathered her gear and headed to the showers, she realized that she wasn't alone; a blonde ponytail swung wildly as its owner tormented a punching bag in the corner, the girl only stopping when she heard Hosanna's footsteps halt behind her. Grabbing a water bottle that matched her pink outfit perfectly, Amelia Mason bounced over, wearing a shiny grin that didn't reach her eyes.

"Fancy seeing you here!" Mia exclaimed, looking the other girl up and down, "You getting in that last bit of practice as well? Or did you finally realize just how far you are from ready for this? Cramming won't work, you know."

"Enough, Mason." Hosanna usually wouldn't have broken straight to confrontation, but this girl had always rubbed her the wrong way, and she was done playing games with her in particular. "Why are you here? You're 18. You don't have a reason to come anymore."

"Well," Mia chirped, unfazed, "I figured someone should be ready, just in case, you know, you chicken out. I wouldn't blame you, it's not like you've been that good for that long. What was it, maybe four years ago that you started trying?" A smile spread slowly across Hosanna's face. Sure, the girl was trying to get under her skin, but she could see right through it. Mia's words were dripping with jealousy. She was mad because she had been working at this her whole life, and Hosanna had picked it up and passed her over in less than four years of effort.

"Good night, Mia." She walked away, not willing to give the blonde the satisfaction of walking all over her. She wasn't that girl anymore, wasn't the kind to believe the good in everyone, to let herself to be dragged through the mud by everyone who was willing to try. Hosanna Carson had a thick skin, and nothing was getting through it.

* * *

A few minutes later, she was clean and heading towards the door, no pink and black leggings in sight. Hosanna did see someone, though, as she passed the big gyms with their floor to ceiling windows. There was one last person in the building, but her District Partner wasn't training. He was just sitting on a bench, face in his hands, staring at nothing.

"Brayden Lipher." Her voice echoed through the room, cutting the silence as he swung around to face her.

"The man himself. I assume that makes you Carson?" Ambling across the room, he held out a hand, and she shook it, a little surprised at his formality.

"Hosanna's fine." It was immediately clear that this wasn't going to be easy. He was standoffish, and she had to admit that she'd come to own the same title. The wish to get a name on her 'Doesn't want to kill Hosanna' list won out, though, and she tried again. "I thought we should get to know each other now, when the cameras aren't watching, since it's probably best that we put up a united front later. If we can snatch control of the Career Pack before the Games even start, we shouldn't have to worry too much about the rest of them making idiots of us later. And… um… it doesn't hurt to have an ally, right? Someone to make sure you don't get murdered in your sleep…" She bit her lip, trailing off as she tried to figure him out. He was hard to read, his furrowed brow sitting somewhere between slight amusement and complete bewilderment at the way her little speech had come out. In the end, though, he just nodded.

"Okay. So, what do you want to know?" She tried to keep a straight face as he watched her expectantly, internally cursing herself for not having thought at all about what in the world she was going to ask him. She had to come up with something, fast, so she glanced around the room, hoping some idea would save her from seeming like a complete idiot. She folded her arms over her chest as the obvious finally came to her.

"What're you best at? If this gym were the arena, what would you go for first?" He took a second to think, surveying his options, and she let him. He was going to have 60 seconds in the Games, so she'd give him the same. Eventually, he strode confidently across the room, grabbed a broadsword, tossed it between his hands.

"Your turn," he yelled back to her, sliding between the ropes and into a sparring ring.

"No," she protested, staying by the door, "No way am I fighting you right now."

"Why not?" Brayden spun the sword comfortably in his hand, finally cracking a grin. "You said this is the arena, right? Doesn't that make us the final two?" Hosanna stood her ground, stubborn, but he wasn't done trying. "Come on, are you really gonna leave the Capitol without a Victor? The whole country's going to hate you." Well, it couldn't hurt, could it? Hosanna crossed the room to grab a pike and shield, then hopped up to face him, crouching down.

"Three," he counted softly, "Two." She lunged at him before he could reach one. Nobody was going to be counting in the Games. She thought she had him off guard, but Brayden was ready, using the weight of his weapon to push aside her longer one. He was stronger, so she was going to have to be faster, dart in and out. If he came bearing down on her with that thing, there was no way her shield was stopping him.

Minutes later, both of them were sweating, and neither one was winning. She'd gotten a couple of good swipes across his stomach, which he kept leaving open under his sword when he lunged, the weapon too heavy to pull back in time, and he'd almost lopped off her arm or concussed her multiple times when she'd gotten too close, but both of them were reading each other like chapter books by this point and nobody was gaining any ground. Nobody, that was, until Brayden brought his sword down like a war hammer and sent her pike flying across the room. He chased her into a corner after that, knowing he held the clear upper ground, so Hosanna used the only trick up her sleeve: She grappled behind her back until her hand closed around something, in this case a discarded water bottle cap, and then she sent it flying across the room.

When it clacked against the stone wall, Brayden whirled around, surprised, and Hosanna launched herself onto his back, arms tight around his neck, legs swinging down in front of his elbows so she could pin both arms behind his back. He just barely managed to keep hold of his sword as he staggered forward, and then got to work trying to shake her off, slamming backwards into the ropes as hard as he could, but she had his air supply cut off. He sacrificed the extra weight of the sword once he realized how far she'd restricted his arms, and eventually dropped to his hands and knees, rolling onto his back in the hope of crushing her off of him.

She indeed let go, and the two of them launched into a classic brawl, no weapons on either side, rolling across the floor and grappling as well as they could. Hosanna knew that there was no way of winning this fight, that when it came down to brute strength he had her easily beat, but neither of them seemed to be caring about strategy anymore, just wrestling. Behaving for once like the kids they were, and having a good time, no strings attached. When they finally stopped to catch their breaths, both smiling, Brayden helped her up.

"That enough of an introduction for you?"

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, this one's longer and I think it's better as well. By the time we finish the introductions, I think I'll have a pretty consistent length set up, so just try to bear with me while I fiddle about with it for a few chapters.**

 **Thank you so much to IciclePower33 for Brayden, as well as to IVolunteerAsAuthor for Hosanna. They're a great pair, and I hope I've done them justice.**


	7. District III Intros: Negative Space

**Marie Netta - 12**

 **District 3 Female**

[Morning Before D3 Reapings]

* * *

"Well, then we'll go with the red. It's just that it's the lowest energy colour, doesn't the violet make more sense? Yes, I'm sorry, I know the consumers don't care what… Yes, I know. Just switch to the red, okay? Thank you, Fuse, I'll talk to you later, someone's on the other line. Bye!

"Hedy Netta's office. Wait, what's the problem?" As her mother balanced the phone between her ear and shoulder, grabbing for a pen and pad of paper as she listened, Marie watched from the doorway. This was every day in the Netta household, but she had never stopped being impressed by how put together her Mom was, never skipping a beat.

The only things she couldn't keep track of were her personal commitments.

"Shoot, okay, I'll get right on that. I'll get you the new plans by noon. No, I'm probably not coming in, I don't have a meeting until seventeen hundred and the coffee's better here." She laughed, sweet and easy, her face loosening by 20 years. Marie envied the charisma, too. It wasn't that she wasn't good with people, she just couldn't do what her Mom did, put everyone at ease and command their respect at the same time. It seemed impossible.

"All right, you too. I'll see you at that luncheon on Friday. Goodbye!" Hedy Netta let out a whooshing sigh, putting the phone away, straightening the papers on her desk. As she tucked all of her hair back behind her ears, her eyes fell on her daughter and she smiled.

"Morning, baby girl. Come here, want to see what Mommy's working on?" A grin spread across Marie's face as she bounced over. She barely ever got to see her Mom's work, but she was already interested. The screen lit up with mechanical drawings as she pulled her chair up in front of it.

"Oh, that's the new cleaning robot, right?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"The vacuum and soap tank make it pretty obvious. And I heard you mention it."

"Astute observations. You really are your mother's daughter, aren't you?" Marie grinned wider, if that was possible.

"So what's the problem?"

"Well, apparently there's something wrong with this mechanism here." The image zoomed in, bit by bit, on a small section of the robot, criss-crossed with wires and tiny gears. Marie's green eyes darted back and forth across the display as her mother watched expectantly.  
"So?"  
"Well, for one thing, your wire paths are a mess." The girl's hands flew instinctively to the keyboard, but she hesitated. "May I?"  
"Please." Little fingers moved fast, and within a few minutes wires throughout the design were moving mostly in straight lines, sorted by colour, pulled into labelled bundles at important junctions. Marie zoomed back in on the problem area, biting her lip in concentration. She just wanted to get it right, just wanted to help.

"Found anything yet, baby? It's okay if you don't, this is complicated stuff."

"No, I… I think I found it." the girl leaned in again, fingers dancing across the keyboard. See this here? It's not connected to anything, that's why it's not working. Here, what if we moved these plugs to here, and then you could squeeze it in over here, next to the other mop functions?"

"How did you… that's amazing, Marie! Thank you! I'm going to tell everyone in the office that my daughter is a mechanical genius." Marie blushed, ecstatic. She'd done it, her Mom had recognized her, even called her a genius! She had finally made her proud, and she was about to make her even prouder.

"Ready to go?" Hedy Netta's face fell, her eyebrows knitted in confusion.

"Go where, baby doll?"

"To school. That's, um… that's why I came in. It's Parents' Day and I have my presentation, you said you'd come this year." Her mother winced and leaned forward, massaging her temples, before looking back into her daughter's hopeful eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Marie, I completely forgot. I have to take care of an important marketing campaign today, and the calls just keep coming. I'm not going to be able to get there in time." As Hedy spoke, her daughter's chin fell to her chest, inch by inch, the backpack strap slipping from her shoulder.

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, baby, I'm just so busy. I'll make it next year, okay?" Marie nodded, but she didn't get her hopes up. That was what she had said every year, and she had never made it.

"Okay."

"Hey, look at me. If the presentation was that important to you, you can do it again tonight, just for me. Special performance. How does that sound?"

"That's... that's okay, it's really not that important. Forget about it." That last sentence was like magic, letting Marie's mother go back to her work world again. As she responded, she had already looked away, absorbed in what was on her screen, rushing to get her daughter out the door.

"Okay, baby. I'm sorry. Have a great day, alright? I love you." A quick kiss on the forehead was all Marie was going to get, so she headed for the door, leaving her backpack in the front hallway. There was no point in going anymore, lots of kids didn't come to Parents' Day. Marie was always the only one there without a parent, so she decided she'd rather be working.

* * *

By the time Marie had gotten her uniform on, Apple and Red were already elbow-deep in oil and gears. Their friend slid up next to them, repositioning the safety glasses on her noses before plunging her own hands straight in.

"You're early, why?" Apple threw pleasantries out the window. She had never been the kind of person to wish anyone a good anything, so she definitely wasn't going to act like she was happy to see Marie. Red grinned teasingly across the motor at her friend.

"They finally kick you out of that fancy place? It's about time."

"First of all, ow. I'm not that bad in school. Second of all, no, they didn't. We're just doing these stupid 'My Hero' presentations today, so we weren't required to come. I decided I'd rather be here."

"Good choice." The girls worked in silence for a while, passing tools back and forth, running to get spare parts. Finally, as they headed to the manager for new assignments, towelling off their black-stained arms, Apple touched Marie's shoulder.

"Hey, about that presentation you were doing?"

"Yeah?"

"Who did you write about?" Marie chewed her lip, eyes glued to her towel. When she answered, it was barely more than a whisper.

"My Mom."

* * *

 **Cerit Bowit - 16**

 **District 3 Male**

[Morning of D3 Reapings]

 _POV Content Warning: Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts_

* * *

Cerit hated waking up. He hated getting up in the morning and seeing things, sitting up in a bed that his father built, seeing all of the books that his mother read, open just the way she left them. Every day and every night, Cerit Bowit suffocated, handmade walls closing and closing and closing around him until he couldn't couldn't couldn't couldn't handle it anymore. Waking up felt like a knife in his chest, pushing and pushing his sternum and his ribs and every last piece of human out of the way to make room for a hole, for a negative space, because it needed a home and gosh darn it it was going to find one in this specific chest. Falling asleep was lying down in a wrench and letting it squeeze you, letting it go tighter and tighter and you couldn't breath couldn't breath couldn't make it stop make it stop god please.

There were too many memories and they were going to bury him. Every single thing he hadn't touched since that day was another shovelful of dirt falling on top of him and into his mouth and his nose and in around his eyeballs because he couldn't make them close. He had to sit there and watch and keep watching because you can't flinch and look away from your own existence because it's not a horror movie even when it feels like one and you have to be there the whole time and that's what drives people crazy is living in a horror movie all the time and you can't ever look away and you can't ever make it stop and you have to sit there and watch and you can't make your eyes close unless you get out unless you die and that's a lot harder than it sounds than it looks.

Some days he couldn't handle it, couldn't handle that he was living in a ghost ship but he didn't know what else to do and he didn't want to move any of it because that was all he had left and maybe if the tableau got lost the memories would too, if they stopped being frozen in time they'd thaw too far and burn in hell. He had to keep them out of hell but maybe if he had to stay in this house another day he'd go instead.

Today was his birthday or he thought it thought it thought it might be but it didn't matter anymore because there weren't days and nights and years and hours there was just the knife and the wrench and the knife and the wrench until maybe he died someday or maybe he didn't because that was just the kind of punishment he deserved was to exist forever. He might have been sixteen that day but it didn't matter because he was alone and when Cerit was alone all the constructs went away and space and time and age were just things that hung in the air, that other people used because nobody thinks about space and time and muddled up things when they're completely alone do they.

So Cerit didn't care what day it was he just knew that the knife had already come in and opened him up but it wasn't time for the wrench yet and so this was just the bit in the middle that didn't hurt as much because it was a dull sort of pain where sometimes he functioned but sometimes he just wanted to die die die die die and this was one of those and he couldn't think and he couldn't stop shaking and he just wanted to slow down to feel like the sound of a record going backwards and if he couldn't do that he wanted to die but dying is a lot harder than it sounds than it looks.

He had a knife because he thought that might be a logical first step but maybe it wasn't because Cerit didn't feel logical he just felt gray and mud and radio static and he couldn't stop shaking and his eyes wouldn't focus because they were crying too much even though he didn't think his brain had asked them to do that.

He wiped away the crying and he made them focus because it was just a little longer and then he could stop he could feel like the sound of a record going backwards so he focused on the lines on the scars on the tiger stripes and made himself count all the way to the end of the row because this was the way he kept track of the middle bits, of the bad ones. He made a new one started careful but he didn't feel like being careful he felt like being in pain today like dying but it was a lot harder than it sounded than it looked and so he stopped being careful and started using a knife like a knife should be used until he felt dull again and then he put his head down on the table and didn't move it so he wouldn't get a splinter in his cheek again.

It turned out it was his birthday, and even if he didn't know it Kiyidai did. Kiyidai was his not-alone-sometimes. She was what made most of the middle bits survivable. She came breezing into his house like sunshine and feather dusters and made things better and didn't ask personal questions unless he wanted her to. She came in and she patched him up and she made the middle bit pretty good most times. This time, she was carrying boxes.

Kiyidai came in chattering about work and boys and life things, and before she had given the situation ten seconds of assessment she was chattering again, complaining about elderly customers while she cleaned the knife, wrapped up the arm, opened some curtains.

"C'mon, what is this, Bow?" Kiyidai neutralized him: laughed at him whenever she could find a reason and sometimes when she couldn't, called him weird nicknames that were really just bits of his name all taken apart. That was how she operated. "I work all day, I tolerate humans that aren't us, and then when I come over here for the sickest birthday party ever you give me _nada_? It's a good thing I brought decorations, because your event planning is dismal." It only took her a few streamers and two conical paper hats to get the first chuckle out of him, and before long he was into it too, was digging in her bag to find more confetti to throw and balloons to fail completely at blowing up. When he pulled out the last little box he nearly fell over laughing.

"What is this?" What Cerit was holding looked more like a lump than anything else, but Kiyidai swore it was probably edible.

"It's a cake, and I made it myself, so you can shut up because I bet you've never even tried to cook."

"Are you serious?" Cerit waved his arms in the direction of the rest of the empty house. "Who else do you think is cooking for me every day?" His friend shrugged.

"I dunno, I just assumed you ate a lot of raw stuff and unpeeled potatoes. You give off an unpeeled potato sort of vibe."

"Excuse me, I give off a what?"

"You heard me, potato boy. Now try the cake, it's delicious." Cerit's eyebrows climbed his forehead quickly. "You've tried it?"

"No, of course not, look at that, that's an unblemished cake right there!" He looked at the cake, but she was wrong. It was extremely blemished. She could have taken 20 bites out of the thing and he wouldn't have noticed. "I didn't have to try it, though. I just know these things."

Cerit really didn't want to put the lump in his mouth, but he cut it anyway, not without considerable effort. Neither teen's first bite made it past their tongue, and after a few minutes of gagging and laughter, Cerit was the first to speak.

"That's horrible!"

"I concur." Unembarrassed, Kiyidai grinned. "Next year's will be better, though. I probably just forgot to wash the eggs or something." Her best friend was appalled.

"Kiyidai?"

"Yes?"

"Please, please, please, for the love of that cat you used to have, let me handle cakes from now on? The fewer cakes you make, the more birthdays we're likely to have."

* * *

Only the little kids were ever really worried about getting Reaped. After a few years you got used to the fact that getting Reaped was something that always happened to someone else.

As Cerit stood up on that stage, he finally got it. To all of them, he _was_ someone else. That was how the Capitol worked, how they got tearful goodbyes and good TV. They made everyone forget how much danger they were really in until it was too late.

He sort of felt like laughing out loud, right then, like shouting, like reminding the citizens of Panem how stupid they were for being kept silent by a stupid TV gimmick, but he kept quiet. He knew what happened to the ones who didn't, and all he needed to worry about just then was his competition.

"Red Byte!" the silent masses started whispering as the girl stepped out into the aisle. Her long hair whipping through the Summer air like fire, she strode toward the stage, keeping a straight face despite the fact that her lacy white dress was doing nothing to hide her scars. Puckered skin the colour of her name followed the contours of her neckline, her cheekbones, her bare legs, ending in delicate tips as though the little girl had been licked by flames. What looked the worst, though, was her arm. Her one arm. Red skin like scales, like twisted ropes, and he didn't want to see what was left under that other white sleeve.

"Wait!" Only about half of the District was able to tear their eyes from the burned girl long enough to seek the source of the second voice, but Cerit was one of them. He watched as a little blonde girl forced her way out of the crowd, shaking from head to toe. Even her voice was trembling.

"M-my name is Marie Netta, and… and I v-volunteer. I volunteer as tribute." The ginger girl spun around, furious.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm saving you."

"You're _saving me_? Are you serious?" Tears crept their way into this girl's voice as well, and even the Peacekeepers were just watching. The birds seemed to have stopped chirping as well; the only sound in the entire world just then was this little girl's voice, cracking everything right down the middle. "Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into? You're going to die out there, Marie, and you're not going to have any better chance than I will. Nobody has ever looked at a 12-year-old in the Games and thought _"You know, I bet that little girl would have made it if she had just had another arm"_ , so shut up and stop trying to save me!"

With that, Red Byte turned and stormed up to the stage, holding her trembling hand out to the Escort.

"Put me in."

"I'm sorry, if she volunteered we can't-" The little girl couldn't take it. She snapped, screaming, hot tears streaming down her cheeks.

"SHUT UP! I don't care about the rules, you reaped me so put me in, put me the hell in!"

"We can't, it's-"

"I get that you can't so tell me what I have to do! What, what happens if I say it too? I volunteer as tribute. Is that what you need to hear?"

"No, that's not how it-"

"Then what do I need to do?" She hadn't stopped screaming, and she hadn't pulled her hand back either. It just sat there shaking as she imploded. "What do I need to do so you can just put me back in?" The blonde had reached the stage.

"It was my choice, Red." The girl with the burns whirled to face her, vicious.

"You're 12 years old, Marie, that shouldn't be a choice you're allowed to make! You can't come out alive, you don't have any better chance than I do, so what is this?"

"I'm paying you back."

"Paying me back? Paying me back for what? For this? For the way I look? This had nothing to do with you!"

"But if I had-"

"You think this is a fair trade? I get burned and you get killed? Because it's not! Life and death aren't fair and you can't make them fair, so shut up and go home!"

"I can't let you-"

"Yes, you can." Red's voice softened, shaking more than ever, and suddenly Cerit found himself embarrassed, as though he were eavesdropping on a private conversation. "You can let me, because you have things to live for, okay? You have a life ahead of you. Me? I've got nothing." As Red sunk to the top step, the Escort nodded to a pair of Peacekeepers. As they lifted the ginger girl and dragged her away, her voice rose once again to a yell, her face turned toward the sky or the cameras, Cerit couldn't tell which.

"I've got nothing to live for, so let me die!" With that, she was gone, and the square was stone silent.

The ceremony was never even finished. Cerit and Marie were just hustled off-stage as the District stood in shock, not a soul stirring. Cerit wasn't missing a beat though. As soon as they were left alone to wait for the train he spun to face his partner, the little shaking blonde girl, and he had to hold in just how much he found himself hating her hating her hating her hating her the way he hated himself sometimes.

He contained the hatred this time, just looked at her and put everything he knew and thought and felt into three short sentences.

"That thing you did out there? That wasn't noble. That was stupid."

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, that's the third District! What did you think of these two? Please let me know if there's anything I'm portraying incorrectly, especially in terms of anything with a content warning.**

 **Thank you so much to everyone reading this. Feel free to leave feedback and/or critiques. I'm going to try and keep to updates every week, but sometimes it'll be two weeks, sometimes it'll be less than a week. Just try to bear with me and I'll try to keep you updated, okay? Symbiosis. It works.**

 **Another round of thanks to Cerit and Marie's creators, Blainemitchell and DefoNotAFangirl respectively. You guys are great.**

 **-Mae**


	8. District IV Intros: Watch for Details

**A/N: Hi. Tried to apologize and explain myself at the end, so if you're mad you can skip on down there first.**

* * *

 **Magnus Lucifus - 17**

 **District 4 Male**

[Day Before the D4 Reapings]

 _POV Content Warning: Gore_

* * *

Magnus wanted to kill the lady. He wanted to rip every shiny blonde hair out of her narrow head and hang her scalp on the wall. He wanted to pull out her nails and her teeth and maybe her tongue if he felt like it and keep them somewhere and watch her blue eyes get all watery and then maybe he'd take those too. Blue eyes were his favourite. Then he wanted to sink his teeth into her narrow neck like one of his rabbits and watch the thick blood come out. He wondered how dark it would be. He'd never made such a pale person bleed. Maybe it would look different.

He wasn't allowed to kill the lady, though, they had him all chained up after the last therapist, so he just growled at her. Fear was almost as fascinating as pain anyway.

"Are you listening, Magnus?" He sneered at her. He hated it when she talked, he hated the honey sound in her voice and the way she was always gesturing with her bony little wrists. He wanted to dissect her, he wanted to take her apart piece by piece and sort her and put it all in neat little containers to look at sometimes. He threw himself at her and gnashed his teeth and watched her face. She could be fun sometimes.

"Use your words, please, Magnus."

"Do you think I'm that soft? That line doesn't work on three-year-olds."

"It seems to have worked on you. Now then, where were we?" He hated her. He hated her. He wanted to chew her up and spit her back out again and again until she learned to treat him like a threat. "Oh, right! Do you have any exciting plans for this week?" Now he was listening. Now they had each other's attention. He liked that question enough to give her a smile, a big one with every one of his finely pointed teeth showing.

"I'm getting out of here." She was alarmed, which was boring. He wished she had gone straight to fear.

"And how are you going to do that?" Magnus's laugh had always been a hollow, throaty sort of thing. He liked it that way, it suited the things that made him laugh.

"Don't worry, I won't be breaking a single law." He loved toying with dumb people. It took them so long to get it.

"Well, I'm glad that you've chosen the right path, but there aren't that many legal ways to leave the facility, Magnus. Are your parents coming to get you?"

"No." He was bored with playing. She was so boring. "I'm volunteering."

"For the- for the Hunger Games?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh. Well… I think we should talk about that choice together, don't you?"

"Why should we?"

"Well, I'm not sure that this is really the choice that you want to make. You're sick, Magnus, and when people are sick they don't always make the best choices for themselves. You understand that, right? It's why you're here."

"You can try to talk me out of this as much as you want, you can use all of your little techniques, but in the end, you're just so insignificant. You understand that, right? It's why you're here." Her thin lips made a little line and those eyes he wanted darted towards the clock. She wanted out.

"Well, Magnus, looks like our time is all up for today. I'll see you tomorrow, alright?" As she slipped out the door, exchanging whispers with the guards outside, he laughed again, long and low.

"No, you won't."

* * *

Magnus liked yard time better than therapy, because he didn't even have to work to get things started. Everybody else was so far off their rocker that he could get them scared in an instant, and he had the entire facility squirming under his thumb.

They were all so easy to play with, like ants. He used to hold glass over ants at midday and watch them burn, but this was so much more fun. People had so many more little thoughts to play with, and they kept for longer. He could creep up behind the psychotic ones and walk his fingers up and down their curved-over spines and whisper to them and watch their eyes widen and feel their heart rates go up and up and up, all the way up. He could even make the other killers run on a good day, could chase them up the fences so they'd get in trouble, because nobody believed them when they blamed Magnus. Normal people were just too slow. Everybody was a lab rat.

Today he just watched. It was a good day to sit on top of the bleachers and look at little bugs in his hand and figure out what made everybody tick. He wanted to get good at that so he could have some fun in the Games. He thought he might like to have some fun before he ripped their throats out. All of the little rats needed to die, but he might conduct a few experiments first, do some of his own research. It was always so much fun to learn about other people's' feelings, because his were all in a different order and that was interesting. He would even be allowed a few dissections there, where no peacekeepers could take him away from his work.

* * *

 **Aria Cavadini - 17**

 **District 4 Female**

[Three Days Before the D4 Reapings]

 _POV Content Warning: Sexual Harassment_

* * *

Bent over her net in concentration, Aria didn't see the man coming up behind her until he was too close, didn't notice that her shirt had ridden up her back until his fingers were on the space between the hem and her jeans, running across her hip bone. As his breathing got heavier in her ear, tainted with alcohol and the sea, hers caught in her throat, every muscle stiffening.

"Come on, sweetheart, let an old man have his fun."

"Please let go of me."

"No, I don't think I will." His hand crept up, sliding over her chest, the other one pressing at her waist. "I think I'll take what I came for."

"Then I think there's been a bit of a miscommunication here." She whirled around, held her knife to his throat, her eyes burning with rage.

"Hey, sweetie," he backed away slowly now. She had him right where she wanted him. "I didn't mean nothin' serious, just a little fun," she advanced, keeping pace with his drunk shuffle, until there was nowhere left to go. His heels were at the boat's edge, seven feet of saltwater between her blade and the safety of the dock.

"Do you want to know what happened to the last man who tried to touch me like that?" He shook his head, looked at the water below and back at her knife. "No? Just one little question, then. How many toes is one good night worth to you?" Not breaking eye contact, she found the trident leaning against the mast behind her, gave it a twirl. "Because I take my payments in pain."

One grin and she had him swimming, arms pinwheeling sloppily through the green water, shooting glances back at her every few seconds, but he had nothing to worry about. Aria gathered her tools, sauntered back up to the boathouse, setting the ice bucket on the counter with a solid _thunk_.

"Fifteen big ones, and I fixed the rest of the nets. That's thirty." The man leered over her.

"Today, it's ten."

"I earned thirty, Vince."

"You're leaving early. That'll have to come out of your pay."

"That's not in the policy. When I fill my quota, I can go."

"Whoops, must have changed the policies, then."

"Really? Can I take a look at those papers, then, just to make sure I'm not breaking any other rules? Or would you rather I just turn you in to the peacekeepers on good faith?" He stared at her hard, but when she didn't back down Vince turned to the register, grabbed the coins and handed them over, watched her count them on the counter and pull them into her hand.

"Cheat me again and I won't give you two options, hear?" With that, she and her knife and her money were gone.

* * *

Aria pushed the door open gently, using her knee to avoid dropping anything.

"Hey, buddy, I'm home!" As she set her bags down on the dusty, uneven kitchen table, the sound of wheels over bumpy floorboards filled the hall, and soon shaggy golden hair and big blue eyes rolled up into the doorway.

"You're early."

"Well, I couldn't miss my own brother's big day, could I? You're a teenager today, let's have some fun!" She took Jack's hands, danced him around the kitchen, humming, until he stopped her, the grin spreading fast across his face.

"Seriously, Ari, what's with the party mood?"

"Oh, you wanna know?" she teased, "You wanna know why I'm in such a good mood? Well, you see, when one gets out of work early, one can get to the market before it's cleared out. And boy, was it a good day to have some money in my pocket." He rolled over, excited, tried to pull down one of the shopping bags, but she snatched it away.

"Ah-ah-ah! Spoilers!"

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously! You can't open your presents before Mom gets home!"

"Come on, one thing? Please?" His puppy eyes just kept getting bigger, and he knew she couldn't resist. The bag came back down on the counter, his sister sighed.

"One thing. But you have to close your eyes and not peek, okay?" He put his hands over his face and held them tight, only his huge grin visible.

"Alright, open up." A cake. He was looking at a cake. He'd never even had a cake before, and this one was as big as his face and had frosting in two colors and-

"How much did this cost?" He was a burden again. His sister had worked so hard and then she had spent all of her money on stupid little frills for him. "This must have been so expensive, I really wish you hadn't-"

"Jack." She put a hand on his shoulder, brought his eyes to meet hers. "We can afford it, okay? We can afford to give you a good birthday. Stop worrying and enjoy a good thing for one, let the adults worry about money. Okay?"

"Okay." At that moment the door swung open again. Anabella Cavadini slipped in, red and purple bruises already visible where her clothes didn't quite cover all of her skin. Two seconds of eye contact were all Aria needed to change gears.

"Hey, Jack, why don't you head back and play in your room, okay? I'll call you for dinner in a little bit, and then we can do cake and presents." She rushed him off into the hallway, caught her mother before she fell over, and got her onto the couch without missing a beat.

"Hey, Mom." Aria's voice was even softer now, cautious. "Can you get your jacket off for me? I'll be back in less than a minute, promise." She grabbed the lotion, some warm water, ice, the pain meds from the top shelf. She sat there and treated her mother's red and purple and green and yellow skin, used everything she had, rubbed her arms and her neck and her back and cleaned her up gently, calloused fingers flitting like silk over the tender bruises. By the time she was finished, Anabella was asleep. Aria carried her mother to bed, took the money from her pocket and put it in the safe.

"Thank you, Mom. Maybe someday we can afford to get you a real job."

The rest of the birthday was quiet, the air a bit heavy with all of the conversations Jack and Arya weren't having. He savoured every bite of the chocolate cake and the sugary frosting, he grinned at the new books and fawned over the art supplies, but everything was in soft voices, a little bit sad, sprinkled with glances down the hall when they thought the other wasn't looking.

The other was always looking, though. Both of them cared too much not to keep track.

* * *

 **A/N: Hi. Multiple apologies to follow, so I'll start with the little stuff and escalate from there.**

 **First of all, I did birthdays two chapters in a row. I know, kind of redundant, but I ended up doing both on accident, and by the time I'd realised that that might be an issue, I was sort of invested in the way the characters were being introduced through the birthday plots, so I hope it can be overlooked.**

 **Second, this was a bit of a shorter chapter. Magnus is more difficult to write than a lot of the others, and I mostly just wanted to finish something up and get it out at this point, so sorry if both quantity and quality suffered a little bit this time around.**

 **Finally, the elephant in the room. It's been a while. I'm sorry. Mentally, I've been in a weird space recently, and to add on I've been in one show or another without a break since New Years, which has kept me busy. Finally, around the time I posted the District 2 Reapings, the submitter of Court (D5) and Icarus (D12) pulled the two of them because of some personal stuff, so I've replaced those boys and the new characters will be on the website and my profile by the time the next chapter goes up.**

 **Once again, no excuse I can make is enough apology to those of you still reading. I'm sorry, and I'll try to go into high production mode while I have a good week or two here. Thank you if you're still around, and thank you to DMonkey1607 and SparrowBirdEliza for Magnus and Aria.**

 **Feel free to leave feedback, digitally yell at me, whatever you need right now. See you next time,**

 **-Mae**


	9. District V Intros: They're Watching You

**Grady Reddick - 17**

 **District 5 Male**

* * *

Grady Reddick was the first person awake, every morning. Definitely the first in his house, probably in his neighborhood, maybe, he sometimes thought, maybe even in his District. He liked to get up first, to spend a few hours alone with the swallows, to shower and shave and dress himself in a quiet world that was entirely his own. He could put attention into every button on his shirt, every flick of his fingers between his bootlaces.

And he had his music in the morning. He could pull out his guitar and sit out on the dormer if it were a temperate sort of dawn and make harmonies to the silence until the first stirrings pricked his ears through the window below. He could wind his fingers through the strings, as light as the air, write new and pretty things, sing back to the birds. He could even pull in the electric tension of an oncoming storm, if that were what the setting moon demanded, strike human skin angrily against nylon and scream into the wind and feel the angst of the sky as it struggled to lighten through darkening clouds.

The best part was that nobody ever heard him. The houses were well spaced on his street, so he wasn't in danger of waking the neighbours, and his family's ears were safe from him as well. Their ears were safe from everything, all cotton canals and oblivious ossicles. Grady was composed of sound, but his entire family was deaf.

As soon as they woke up in the morning, he was on duty. Grady had always been the one keeping the entire system together, had always been that bridge between his quiet home and the bustling real world. He played caretaker, played interpreter, played breadwinner, brother, and son. Everyone was always telling him that he had gotten lucky, that getting the right recessive carrier genes was the best thing that had ever happened to him, but he didn't feel lucky. He mostly just felt lost. He was a bridge, a link, but part of him wanted to be a person too.

A person with parents who could appreciate his passions and take care of him and listen, instead of parents who, as much as they loved him, assumed a hearing person could take care of himself. They needed to put their own needs first. And then Harper. And then Jonah. And then maybe him if they had time. Which they never did, in the end.

He loved both of his worlds, but he wasn't quite a part of either one. The deaf community would never accept him because of his innate privilege. The hearing community would never accept him because of his upbringing.

His only real home was the stage, where he could be anyone he wanted because all people wanted to do was listen. He didn't have to be that hearing kid, he didn't have to be that kid with the deaf parents, he was just that guy with the guitar and the nice voice. He could sit at the front of a crowded pub and do what he loved and be whoever he wanted all evening, and as long as he brought home money his parents didn't care. Sometimes he thought the people were probably too drunk to listen, to remember him the next morning, but it wasn't the publicity that he loved, it was the person he was when he was playing. Sure, fame and fortune would be nice, but he was okay with the fact that he probably wasn't headed in that direction anytime soon.

* * *

Grady lived for words, ate and drank and breathed them, but he also respected the fact that he lived most of his life in silence.

Anything he could say out loud and so much more could be conveyed simply through the way his calloused fingers and the muscles of his face commanded the air in front of him. He could have coherent conversations from beyond shouting distance. He could communicate feelings and thoughts and emotions that his spoken language didn't even have words for yet.

Being bilingual didn't disable him from connecting to anyone; it enabled him to connect to everyone, to understand the world around him in a way that people with only one way to express themselves never could, to use every piece of language, every tool he had, to scream into the vast universe and be heard.

* * *

 **Solara Boman - 17**

 **District 5 Female**

The first time Solara looked up at the clock, it was 9:00 and the lab was empty. The look, of course, was less to do with curiosity- as she'd had a perfectly functional internal clock running since she'd been five- and more to do with reassurance. Solara needed to catch the 9:30 train home, and she wasn't going to let overconfidence be what finally made her miss it.

Solara almost always left last. It was nice to have the train to herself, and she didn't really like people watching her clear. That was why she was normally the first one there in the mornings as well; Solara needed privacy.

Privacy to stand in front of big double doors and look stupid for twenty minutes, to walk seven paces back and three forward and then touch the floors just right and trace the insignia on the doors with both index fingers so that they would meet precisely in the center and then touch every bolt in the room and then smooth over every corner with two fingers and start all the way over if anything went wrong. Privacy to hate the way those doors made her feel every time she saw them, the way sidewalk cracks and asymmetry and her own sentences made her feel and the way that everything in her brain just kept swirling like the sound of metal in the disposal even though everyone kept telling her that her mind was extraordinary. If this was what extraordinary felt like, Solara would have given a lot to be mediocre.

The bus was too crowded. People must have worked late to make up for the Holiday on Reaping Day. It was too crowded and her seat was taken, so she had to sit farther down where she couldn't watch the little holographic map move towards her station. She kept standing up, had to walk over to where she could check it to make sure she hadn't missed her station and had to check her pockets for her house keys exactly seven equally spaced times every minute because for all she knew she could drop them or they could be stolen and the sooner she checked the more likely she'd get them back. The constant worry circuit that was Solara's brain kept running at top speed until she safely reached her own threshold.

* * *

To step into the Boman house in the evening was to step straight into a wall of smell. The entire first floor was warm and hazy with oregano and thyme and a touch of basil on a good day. Solara stopped in the entryway to take off her jacket and shoes, to close her eyes and take in her home with every sense she had.

Her mother Joule was in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes with the pretty new knife her husband had given her for Solstice while salted water boiled for pasta, every thwack of the blade resonating in Solara's nervous mind as a slice through her mother's finger, not the tomato. The same red sauce would stain the counter, either way, and a human finger cut as easily as a carrot.

Joule's parents were in the living room with Galvan, probably working on his reading again by the sounds of it. She could hear the soft rumble of her grandfather's voice filling the empty hallway.

"Now come here, little man, my eyes are getting old and I'm going to need some help with this page here." Little feet pitter-pattered across wood planks, an excited lisp answering the gravelly tones.

"Says… when the wain stopted… when the wain stopted, the baby elphint wen ow-side to pay!" Giggles and clapping hands, because all it took to make her youngest brother laugh was a good illustration. Thales, however, elbow-deep in homework at the kitchen table, was a tougher nut to crack. Solara could hear the whir of Nikol's newest invention in the dining room as well, and knew her brother and sister well enough to count down the seconds before he took a swat at it.

Before she could reach zero, however, the door squeaked open and closed behind her, soft footfalls on the carpet and then big, spidery hands on her head.

"Hey, Sunny girl," her father's voice tumbled into the entryway, filling it up, "You got your eyes closed?"

"Yep, and I was almost finished with my study when you interrupted it." Failing to look annoyed, Solara turned and buried herself in Volt Boman's overcoat. Her father had to leave early in the mornings, and when she slept in a little, on days like today, she wasn't awake to make his coffee and give him a kiss goodbye, and by the time they were together again in the evening it felt like they had passed an eternity apart. Volt's first child had always been his favorite, and he wore that on his sleeve, not afraid of the world being a little bit unfair.

She wanted to linger forever in that coat, to melt into the musk of elderflower and motor oil, to press her cheek into the fuzz of the blue quarter-zip sweater he'd had since Solara was born, but logic and the real world managed, as always, to prevail, and she extracted herself to the dining room, wherein the tension happened to be escalating. After giving her brother a compulsory hair tousle, Solara was all business, removing the offending robot from between her siblings and sending them both to their respective rooms so that she could set the table. Sure, she had grown up fast, as the oldest in a family that thrived on intelligence and reason, but she'd never been one to shy away from a bit of responsibility and control.

* * *

The things that Solara couldn't control, however, these were the problems. There were too many variables at a Reaping, not enough data to assess the probability of her demise, or Thales', or Nikol's. No, please not Nikol. It was her first Reaping and she was in a dress she'd been waiting all year to wear and Solara had even let her borrow some of the makeup and pretty jewelry she never wore herself. Nikol wasn't like other girls, she was quirky and all over the place and she usually didn't care what she looked like, but today she'd wanted to dress up. Just in case she ended up on camera, she'd said. Not her. Please not Nikol.

So instead of trying to calculate how many times in a thousand trials the name of someone in the Boman family would be pulled from one of those fishbowls, Solara focused on something more concrete, something she could count: how many feathers the Escort was wearing. Feathers in her hairpiece, on her dress, her shoes, her jewelry. Just count the feathers and pay attention to what happens next because it's the boys' bowl and it could be Thales, could be Geo, but it wasn't. It was

"Grady Reddick."

When she called the boy's name, not a single scream shook the smog-heavy morning. Not until he made it to the aisle, at least. Then the voices came, four of them, loud and incoherent and all smushed together and wordless, but he kept walking, held himself together and gave the audience a cocky grin as the voices kept coming, kept coming until peacekeepers silenced them.

Reddick. She remembered him. He was the kid with the deaf parents, the kid that played a guitar around town sometimes. He had always been in her class at school, hadn't been half bad, but then she'd gotten an offer for her first internship and he'd dropped out to support his family. So many different paths. So many variables.

She couldn't think about the boy just then, though, because the pencil-thin tips of the Escort's high heels were clicking their way over to the girls' bowl. Solara's fingers crawled their way home to the elastic on her wrist, slipped under and started twisting, beating in time with the second hand spinning around and around in her head.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven. Now Counter-Clockwise.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven. Stop. Listen.

"Solara Boman!"

She spent a moment not moving, just stood there staring and holding onto her hair tie as if they had just called somebody else's name, somebody else's name, just like every other time. The smack of Thales' knuckles against a peacekeeper's jaw, however, as he tried to reach his sister, brought her quickly back down to reality, dropped without a parachute, hitting so hard that she could feel her entire body tremble, every single muscle, as she made her way to the stage, held the tears in, tried to just go numb.

She held out her hand to the boy, could see every atom of every finger quaking in fear, but he pulled her in for a hug instead, his face next to hers, consonants punctuating the four words he gave her: "They're watching you. Smile." When he released her again, held her hand high in the air, turned to face the cameras, they both grinned like their lives depended on it. This was because they did.

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, here's District Five! I don't have a ton I need to say down here, except to thank those of you who are still reading this.**

 **Thank you so much to mellissa rose for Solara. Everyone, feel free to leave behind feedback, questions, criticism, anything you want. Thank you!**


	10. District VI Intros: Promises

**A/N: We're back. This one's a bit short, but they'll get longer again; I just wanted to get something posted.**

* * *

 **Rory Eisenhower - 13**

 **District 6 Male**

* * *

Red streaked the walls, running down in droplets just fast enough to avoid the next splatter. Red adorned the children's faces like war paint. Volume reigned as hundreds of shouts echoed tinnily between cold stone walls, as warriors slid out from behind their barricades just far enough to throw another grenade, because they knew that leaning any further would make them an easy target for the enemy. Ammunition soared through the air, smacked to the floor if the victims were lucky, but sometimes found its target, submerging them in hot grease and mess and so much red. Chanting voices broke through the wordless shouts of anger and surprise, brothers and sisters banding together to fight with their lives for what they believed in.

The middle school cafeteria was an insurrection, and Rory Eisenhower was at the center of it all.

He stood tall on a stool, fist in the air, unscathed in the crossfire as streams of ketchup and steaming, greasy ground meat soared through the air around him from behind fortresses of overturned tables.

The moment that he uncurled his fist, held both palms in the air, shouted for silence, all eyes fell to him.

"That's enough. We've shown them the damage that we can do, but are we here to win the battle?" His voice, projecting through the tiled room, held the rest of his class in rapture, ready to agree with whatever he wanted, to follow every mantra he told them they could trust.

"No!" Came the resounding answer.

"No, we're not. We're here to win the war!" Here, a pause for morale, to let the 13-year-olds cheer, go wild.

"And do you know how we're going to win the war?" Silence. "By presenting a united front. It's time to take down our barricades, to come together against a common enemy. And who is the common enemy?" Once again, his peers knew the script, understood their part in it, responded in ecstatic unison.

"The administration!" That was it. He had them all right where he wanted them, each middle schooler standing ready to jump from a bridge if he told them it would be for the good of the effort. The beauty was that most of them had no idea what they were talking about, what they were fighting for. They just liked to shout, to be told what they wanted, to feel like they were making a difference. They didn't need beliefs, they just needed sufficient motivation. Once he understood the teenage hive mind, Rory could have commanded the throw down of the Capitol, and none of his followers would have questioned a moment of his judgment. He would have, too, just to see how far he could take things, if it weren't for the administration.

For the lunch ladies, who ran screaming to the secretary every time he threatened another revolt. For the secretary, who was a small lady with glasses set to the tip of her nose who always smelled of lint and stale shortbread, but still held enough muscle in her to pull Rory from his high horse and down the hall to the Principal's office. Especially for the Principal, who would have expelled Rory long ago if it were an option. However, it wasn't. Rory Eisenhower had been kicked out of three schools for his particular brand of mischief, and this was the last option, and they couldn't get rid of him, because they were public.

Rory was stuck there, in this school full of delinquents and homeless kids and drug addicts and the kids who just didn't try, but he was perfectly average. He simply had an unfortunate tendency to push the limits of authority. That's what they had told his parents when they had expelled him from his last school, anyway. Word for word.

Rory's mother might have been alright with his shenanigans, might have passed it off as creativity and exploration, might have been a little more liberal with her parenting, but Mr. Eisenhower was not pleased in the least with his only son's antics. He was more of the strict successful type, wanted a crisp, polished child.

As such, every time the two of them were called in to discuss Rory, the boy was quickly reminded of why they had divorced. Most of the time, he couldn't even figure out how they had ended up married to each other in the first place. According to which parent he asked, either one or the other of them had once been quite a different person.

Rory was careful, however. He might have been bold, but he was patient, and a planner. If nothing else, he had at least had the common sense to get in trouble during his Mom's week.

* * *

 **Jeina Miriam - 13**

 **District 6 Female**

* * *

She heard Gerald sit up, could feel his eyes on her from across the dark room, but she didn't turn to meet his gaze. She continued to face the wall, instead; the wall wouldn't say anything about the tear tracks on her cheeks. She rubbed at her face with her thumbs, tried to rub away the traces of crying, waited for her brother to speak first.

"Hey," he whispered, after a minute, "Jeina, are you awake?" She sat up, then, turned to face him, pulling her blanket around her bare shoulders.

"What?"

"Are you scared? For the Reapings?" She couldn't quite make out his expressions in the darkness, so she ran across to his bed, hating the way the floorboards chilled her feet, careful not to step on the ones she knew would whine. She hopped up next to her brother and pressed herself in next to him, her head on his chest, trying to soak up his body heat and the way he still smelled like Dad.

"I guess so. I know we're probably safe, but that's what everyone thinks, isn't it? Or they would all train, like the Careers. Nobody's really safe, are they?"

"You are, Jeina. I promise you, no matter what, I'm going to keep you safe. I won't let them take you from me." She felt the tears coming back, burning up her throat, prickling at the backs of her eyes.

"I don't want to die. I really don't want to." She shuddered as a sob broke past her efforts to keep it at bay, tears rolling down her face and a soft noise escaping her lips. Her brother held her closer, wrapped her up in his blankets.

"It's going to be okay, Jeina. I'm going to be there with you, every minute of it. I'm going to keep you safe."

"If I die, Ger- if I die in there, do I get to go where Dad is? Is that real?" He stiffened, then, pushed her away.

"I asked you not to talk about Dad anymore, Jeina."

"Why not? If we try to forget him, it's not going to make him stop being dead. You can't make him stop being-" He put a hand over her mouth, not in the teasing way she was used to, but harsher.

"Stop saying that word." She shoved his arm away and sat up straighter, hurt.

"Why, Ger? It's just hurting you not to admit, to keep pretending like you can keep them alive by not admitting that they're dead. It's just a word. Say it already. Tell me the truth. Tell me, out loud, that you know they're dead." He gave her a look. "Yeah, I said it, and I'll say it again. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. I'll say it until it stops meaning anything, until it's just a sound. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead." She didn't realize how loud she was until Joanne's knock came at the door, sharp and hard. The siblings locked eyes, wide and surprised, before whirling around to face the door.

"What are you two doing in there? It's the middle of the night." Turning to each other again, Gerald and Jeina spoke in unison.

"Nothing, sorry." Both of them scrambled for any excuse, any explanation. Gerald beat his sister to it.

"Jeina just had a bad dream, we're fine now. We'll be quiet." They could hear Joanne's sigh through the door, could almost see her head shake and her lips spread into a bemused smile; she always knew when they were lying to her.

"Alright then, little ones. Get some sleep." They stayed silent, listening to her heavy footfalls recede down the hall. For another minute, neither moved, both glancing at the other when they thought their sibling wasn't looking.

"Jeina, I-"

"No, stop. It's okay. You don't have to explain yourself, never to me. I love you, and I'll be here when you're ready to talk about everything, but I won't push you again. That's a promise." And although Jeina Miriam would keep that promise until the day she died, her brother would be forced to break his own sooner than he had imagined.

* * *

 **A/N: Okay, everyone, I'm back at it with the Intros, and I don't plan on disappearing again anytime soon.**

 **On another note, while we work through this one, I've started another SYOT: Dead Men, Deadly Wine. It centers on the 100th Hunger Games, and I really hope you'll all check it out and consider submitting.**

 **Catch you on the flip side, Mae.**


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